Forum Luurker... even the simplest functions of addition and subtraction in geographic terms task your first statement. Historically, of the four continents where trans-continental expansion was possible, technology based socieites prevailed where there was a mixture of societies seeking the same territories. Certainly, crimes against humanity were present in all cases. Not just our own expansion. I or you cannot absolve the sins of others, or change them. I strongly object tasking only our own people when evil is rampant, worldwide today.

I am not pleased with President Bush, but the September 11th attacks on all of us DID take place on his watch. Europe stood silent at the ethnic cleansing in the prior Jugoalavia, but Europe has its own agenda. In an apparently lawless world who will be first to say "enough is enough?" What value to us in any way is Afghanistan? What corporations, what monoliths are there? Maybe we do not trust our government, but who better to trust than the young men and women we raised in our image? Are some of us to say they have not learned from our errors in the past? Have the grace not to laugh up a sleeve at what some think of as an oxymoron, but, whatever its leadership, our American Military is the best trained, most intelligent and capable, available force to begin instituting a rule of law in a nuclear world with weapons of mass destruction. They have pledged their very lives not to Bush, or the past, but to that cause.